Wes Streeting’s leadership ambitions have been an open secret in Westminster, so few colleagues were shocked when the Health Secretary walked out of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet on Thursday.
The surprise was that he stopped short of challenging him for the Labour leadership.
He needs the support of 81 Labour MPs to trigger the contest, and by saying he supports a "broad" contest to become the next leader, it suggests he is delaying his tilt for the top until Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is able to stand. Timing his run earlier risks leaving Mr Streeting open to accusations he was not the favourite of party members, and invites a challenge further down the line.
Humble beginnings
At 43, he is seen as a leading figure in Labour’s new generation: a charismatic, media-savvy operator with strong credentials whose rising star quality has been impossible to ignore.
Unlike many Westminster figures, the politician’s humble start in life began in a council flat in Stepney, east London, raised largely in a single-parent household alongside five brothers and a sister. His parents were teenagers when he was born.
The family history he often recounts is among the most colourful in British politics.
His maternal grandfather, Bill Crowley, was a career criminal and armed robber who knew the notorious gangsters the Kray twins and spent repeated spells in prison. Mr Streeting has spoken openly about how Crowley nevertheless encouraged lively debates about politics and religion around the kitchen table.
His grandmother also served time behind bars at Holloway prison. She shared a cell with Christine Keeler, the central figure in the Profumo scandal over Soviet spies that shook the Conservative government in 1963. They remained friends for decades. Mr Streeting once joked that politics and scandal were almost woven into the family inheritance.
Swift rise
The path from east London hardship to the heart of government lends much to his political appeal in Labour.
Educated at Westminster City School – the state comprehensive rather than the leading private school – Streeting funded himself through retail jobs before reading history at Cambridge University. There he developed a reputation as an accomplished organiser, serving as president of the Cambridge Students’ Union and later the National Union of Students.
His rise through Labour ranks was swift, though not without its moments of doubt. He briefly left the party over Tony Blair’s backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. That decision resonates among older Labour supporters and could play well when the vote goes to the estimated 250,000 party membership.
However, when Mr Streeting entered Parliament in 2015 he aligned with Labour’s modernising wing, being economically cautious, socially liberal and instinctively pro-America and Europe.
Appointed as Health Secretary when Labour entered power two years ago, he declared the NHS “broken” and took personal ownership of resolving the junior doctors’ strikes and reducing waiting lists. Allies say his ability to confront NHS inefficiency has set him apart from predecessors who defended the status quo.
His success was boosted on Thursday when new NHS figures showed the biggest fall in hospital waiting lists for 17 years.
Reformer, not Reform
In his bid to become prime minister, Mr Streeting is expected to present himself as the candidate of pragmatic reform. He has pledged to stick to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules while increasing defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP, positioning himself as economically disciplined but strong on security. A prominent Remainer, he has also hinted Labour should have closer economic ties with Europe, including the possibility of rejoining the customs union.
On immigration, he has expressed unease about aggressive crackdowns on visas and asylum seekers, arguing that Labour risks alienating younger and metropolitan voters. He balances strong support for Labour Friends of Israel with criticism of illegal Israeli settlements and support for measures addressing Islamophobia.
Aside from his wafer-thin majority of 528 in his London constituency seat, Ilford North, he has other vulnerabilities. He publicly defended disgraced Labour influencer Peter Mandelson over his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, and potentially damaging phone messages with the former ambassador to Washington will soon be published.
Mr Streeting would enter the race without a huge amount of support from the left wing of the party.
A practising Christian who lives in east London with his long-term partner Joe Dancey, he is also known for his karaoke renditions of Robbie Williams songs at Labour conferences. Having survived kidney cancer in 2021, he often speaks with unusual candour about mortality and ambition.
Ultimately it will be down to Labour members who in a likely post-Starmer future want someone who might have flaws but has a deeply personal story of working-class survival and success.
Interviewed in 2023 after releasing a memoir about his colourful family, Mr Streeting did not hold back on his hope to follow in the footsteps of previous Labour prime ministers.
When asked whether he dreamt of being leader, he said he had a lot to prove first.
“If I can take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history and make it fit for the future, and that’s all I ever achieve in politics, I’ll retire feeling very proud of that. And if my place in the history books is akin to [architect of the NHS] Nye Bevan’s, I’d be more than happy.”
“And if I got a chance to be a Keir Starmer or Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or [Harold] Wilson or [Clement] Attlee, I would die happy.”
